Bandemer was playing with a shot gun with his cousin and Mendoza. The cousin reportedly stepped outside to smoke a cigarette and heard the gun go off. He went back inside to find that Bandemer had been shot with the firearm in the chest.

Police reportedly said the shooting was likely an accident since Bandemer and Mendoza were friends and they had both been messing around with the gun before Bandemer was killed.

However, Mendoza showed questionable behavior by allegedly telling the cousin “not to snitch” after the shooting and throwing the gun out in high grass in front of an abandoned house.

When Mendoza was arrested and taken into custody he further incriminated himself by posting a video to Snapchat — from the backseat of the police car — admitting he killed his friend.

“I killed Chris and now I'm going to kill myself,” he reportedly said in the recording.

While Mendoza’s defense attorney maintains the argument that the shooting was an accident, the presiding judge Peggy Chiampas defined the entire situation as an “absolute tragedy.”

The judge determined that there was not enough evidence to make her believe the shooting was intentional; however, she ordered Mendoza to be held in custody in lieu of $250,000 bail.

It’s possible that Mendoza’s social media post wasn’t a confession that he purposely killed his friend, but simply an unintended side effect of this technological era in which people feel compelled to document every single moment of their lives, be it good or bad.